Week 15: Through the Looking-Glass

Humpty Dumpty

Reading
time: 5 minutes. Word count: 900 words.

After her encounter with the Queen,
Alice meets the famous Humpty Dumpty who sat on a wall. Can you repeat the nursery
rhyme about Humpty Dumpty? (Don't worry: if you cannot remember how it goes,
Alice will recite it on the next page.)

Alice was just beginning to say 'There's a mistake somewhere -- ,'
when the Queen began screaming so loud that she had to leave the sentence unfinished.
'Oh, oh, oh!' shouted the Queen, shaking her hand about as if she wanted to
shake it off. 'My finger's bleeding! Oh, oh, oh, oh!'

Her screams were so exactly like the whistle of a steam-engine,
that Alice had to hold both her hands over her ears.

'What IS the matter?' she said, as soon as there was a chance
of making herself heard. 'Have you pricked your finger?'

'When do you expect to do it?' Alice asked, feeling very much
inclined to laugh.

'When I fasten my shawl again,' the poor Queen groaned out:
'the brooch will come undone directly. Oh, oh!' As she said the words the brooch
flew open, and the Queen clutched wildly at it, and tried to clasp it again.

'Take care!' cried Alice. 'You're holding it all crooked!'
And she caught at the brooch; but it was too late: the pin had slipped, and
the Queen had pricked her finger.

'That accounts for the bleeding, you see,' she said to Alice
with a smile. 'Now you understand the way things happen here.'

'Why, I've done all the screaming already,' said the Queen.
'What would be the good of having it all over again?'

By this time it was getting light. 'The crow must have flown
away, I think,' said Alice: 'I'm so glad it's gone. I thought it was the night
coming on.'

'I wish I could manage to be glad!' the Queen said.
'Only I never can remember the rule. You must be very happy, living in this
wood, and being glad whenever you like!'

'Only it is so VERY lonely here!' Alice said in a melancholy
voice; and at the thought of her loneliness two large tears came rolling down
her cheeks.

'Oh, don't go on like that!' cried the poor Queen, wringing
her hands in despair. 'Consider what a great girl you are. Consider what a long
way you've come to-day. Consider what o'clock it is. Consider anything, only
don't cry!'

Alice could not help laughing at this, even in the midst of
her tears. 'Can YOU keep from crying by considering things?' she asked.

'That's the way it's done,' the Queen said with great decision:
'nobody can do two things at once, you know. Let's consider your age to begin
with -- how old are you?'

'I'm seven and a half exactly.'

'You needn't say "exactually,"' the Queen remarked:
'I can believe it without that. Now I'll give YOU something to believe. I'm
just one hundred and one, five months and a day.'

'I can't believe THAT!' said Alice.

'Can't you?' the Queen said in a pitying tone. 'Try again:
draw a long breath, and shut your eyes.'

'I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen.
'When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes
I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. There goes
the shawl again!'

The brooch had come undone as she spoke, and a sudden gust
of wind blew the Queen's shawl across a little brook. The Queen spread out her
arms again, and went flying after it, and this time she succeeded in catching
it for herself. 'I've got it!' she cried in a triumphant tone. 'Now you shall
see me pin it on again, all by myself!'

'Then I hope your finger is better now?' Alice said very politely,
as she crossed the little brook after the Queen.

[... The Queen then turns into a sheep who owns a shop, and
in the shop Alice buys an egg. And, of course, it is a very strange egg. ...]

However, the egg only got larger and larger, and more and more
human: when she had come within a few yards of it, she saw that it had eyes
and a nose and mouth; and when she had come close to it, she saw clearly that
it was HUMPTY DUMPTY himself. 'It can't be anybody else!' she said to herself.
'I'm as certain of it, as if his name were written all over his face.'

It might have been written a hundred times, easily, on that
enormous face. Humpty Dumpty was sitting with his legs crossed, like a Turk,
on the top of a high wall -- such a narrow one that Alice quite wondered how he
could keep his balance -- and, as his eyes were steadily fixed in the opposite
direction, and he didn't take the least notice of her, she thought he must be
a stuffed figure after all.

'And how exactly like an egg he is!' she said aloud, standing
with her hands ready to catch him, for she was every moment expecting him to
fall.

'It's VERY provoking,' Humpty Dumpty said after a long silence,
looking away from Alice as he spoke, 'to be called an egg -- VERY!'

'I said you LOOKED like an egg, Sir,' Alice gently explained.
'And some eggs are very pretty, you know' she added, hoping to turn her remark
into a sort of a compliment.

'Some people,' said Humpty Dumpty, looking away from her as
usual, 'have no more sense than a baby!'

Questions. Make sure you can answer these questions
about what you just read:

Modern Languages
MLLL-2003. World Literature: Frametales. Laura Gibbs, Ph.D.
This work is licensed under a Creative
Commons License.
You must give the original author credit. You may not use this work for commercial
purposes. If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute
the resulting work only under a license identical to this one.
Page last updated:
October 9, 2004 12:48 PM